Barbie

Let me ask you this:
What do we teach our daughters
When the bestselling doll on the market, Barbie,
Has a made-up face and mascara-ed eyes and lips as pink as grapefruit,
But not enough ambition or intelligence to calculate her net worth?
What do I tell my daughter
when we pass through Toys-R-Us
And she wants that artificial décolletage in a box,
This trickery, chicanery of Mattel
who fashioned this doll, this plastic piece of shit
With a serial number lingering on her lower back like a tramp stamp
Above slim thighs which gap and disproportionate legs,
Legs, I tell her, that would snap beneath
Barbie’s weight if she were real
That would make her fall at the slightest step,
Only for the purpose of mass-production and consumerism
which …

Midas and Medusa

Our suffering was human long before you
Tried to “humanise” it,
Give us the kiss of life,
I am not your wife, I am not your sister
I am not your fucking daughter, sorry to break
All this water
On the embers of you
Deigning, for once, to give a damn
What your friends do to us
By imagining we belong
To you — I will demonstrate
How little you know of possession
As I run
My keys along your car
Til your mouth unlocks, drops open
And I dive down your throat, walk around
In you, the cage
Of your ribs more spacious than
My own, two sizes too small,
Zero, counting down to take-off, space
For my heart all taken
With the frenzied tango
Of me watching you …

Reborn

The ability to move and be moved by another person, to love and be loved, sends chills down my spine.
To feel another’s emotions intertwined with my own.
The exquisite high of a touch, a smile, a moment, awakens my lungs so that they may breathe in the fresh surroundings you bear.
I once was deaf to the voices of reason.
I once was blind to the changes around me.
But now, I take it all in.
Like a newborn’s first glimpse of the world, you have made me anew.
Like my soul once sat partial, you have made me whole.
Flesh on flesh you consume me.
You take me as I am.
Let me be only grateful to hold you in my arms while I am allowed to.

Hero

We all know I’ve given you everything,
that – as far as I’m concerned sometimes – I have nothing left.
You took it all, because I gave it. Freely, willingly, without hesitation,
you didn’t have to ask.
Sometimes you didn’t.

I’ve given you all my words,
and now I don’t have much more to say.
At least, I won’t, when I finally tell the whole big scary truth –
which, despite my best efforts, I have yet to do.

When I say that it’s all out there… Well, that’s a lie.
Some of my secrets I’m still keeping.
Some of my wounds, well, they’re still bleeding.